Goebbels, (Josephin full Paul ) Joseph Goebbels ( born Oct. 29, 1897 , Rheydt, Ger.—died May 1, 1945 , Berlin ) minister of propaganda for the German Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. A master orator and propagandist, he is generally accounted responsible for presenting a favourable image of the Nazi regime to the German people. Following Hitler’s suicide, Goebbels served as chancellor of Germany for a single day before he and his wife, Magda Goebbels, poisoned their six children and took their own lives.

Goebbels was the third of five children of Friedrich Goebbels, a pious Roman Catholic factory clerk, and Katharina Maria Odenhausen. His parents provided him with a high school education and also helped support him during the five years of his undergraduate studies. In World War I he He was exempted from military service during World War I because of his clubfoot (presumably a result of having contracted polio as a child), which later enabled his enemies to draw a parallel with the cloven hoof and limp of the Devil. This defect , presumably not congenital but rather the result of a childhood disease, played a disastrous role in his life by engendering strong desires for compensationin Goebbels a strong desire to be compensated for his misfortune.

After graduating from Heidelberg University in 1922 , with a doctorate in German philology, Goebbels engaged in—largely unremunerative—literarypursued literary, dramatic, and journalistic efforts, writing an Expressionist novel in diary form in the 1920s. Although not yet involved in politics, Goebbels, in common with most of his contemporaries, was imbued with a nationalistic fervour made more intense by the frustrating outcome of the war. During his university days, a friend also introduced him to socialistic socialist and communistic communist ideas. Antibourgeois from his youth, Goebbels remained so in spite of all despite his later upper-class affectations. On the other hand, initially he was initially not anti-Semitic. The high school teachers he valued most were Jews, and he was , during that at one time , engaged to a half-Jewish girl. At that point his options, if he chose to enter politics, were still wide open. An accident As a young man his options remained wide open as he contemplated political involvement. Indeed, it was an accident that determined the party he was to join.

In the autumn of 1924 he Goebbels made friends with a group of National Socialists. A gifted speaker, he was soon made became the district administrator of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers’ Party) in Elberfeld and editor of a biweekly National Socialist magazine. In November 1926 Hitler appointed him district leader in Berlin. The NSDAP, or Nazi Party, had been founded and developed in Bavaria, and, up to that time, there had been practically no party organization in Berlin, the country’s German capital. Goebbels owed his new appointment to the prudent choice he made in a conflict between Gregor Strasser, representing the “left-wing,” anti-capitalist wing” anticapitalist faction of the NSDAP, and the “right-wing” party leader, Hitler. In this conflict, Goebbels , displayed opportunism by taking Hitler’s side against his own inner convictions, took Hitler’s side.

Personally courageous and never shirking danger, Goebbels proceeded to build Nazi strength in Berlin until Hitler’s accession to power in January 1933. In 1928 Hitler gave the successful orator, well-versed propagandist, and brilliant journalist (he was editor of Goebbels—who founded Der Angriff[(“The Assault”] and ) in 1927 and served as its editor and later, from 1940 to 1945, served as editor of Das Reich) the —the additional post of propaganda director for the NSDAP for all of Germany. Goebbels began to create the Führer myth around the person of Hitler and to institute the ritual of party celebrations and demonstrations that played a decisive role in converting the masses to Nazism. In addition, he spread propaganda by continuing his rigorous schedule of speechmakingspeech making.

After the “seizure of Nazis seized power, ” Goebbels was also able to take took control of the national propaganda machinery. A “National National Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” Propaganda was created for him, and in addition he became president of the newly formed “Chamber of Culture” for the ReichCulture.” In this capacity he controlled, besides propaganda as such, the press, radio, theatre, films, literature, music, and the fine artsas well. . In May 1933 he was instrumental in the burning of “unGerman” books at the Opera House in Berlin. “The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is at an end,” Goebbels triumphantly told the crowd. A month earlier, Hitler had commanded him to organize a boycott of Jewish businesses. To be sure, his Goebbels’s control of foreign propaganda, the press, theatre, and literature was limited—exercised only in bitter jurisdictional struggles with other officials—and he displayed little interest in regulating music and art. He did not, however, succeed in extending his power into other areas, such as the high schools.

His Many of his cultural policies were fairly liberal, but he had to capitulate to the demands of nationalist extremists. Even his propaganda messages were limited by the rationale that ceaseless agitation only dulls the receptive powers of the listener. As far as Goebbels was concerned, efficiency took precedence over dogmatism, expediency over principles.

Goebbels’ Goebbels’s influence decreased in the years 1937 and 1938. During this time he also became involved in a love affair with a Czechoslovakian film star that nearly caused him to give up his career and family. (Since In 1931 he had been married to Magda Ritschel, a woman from the upper middle class who eventually bore him six children.) His position role underwent little change with the outbreak of World War II(which he did not welcome): in times of victory, the propagandist’s services are not much in demand. Goebbels’ hour came with the turn in fortunes of the war after the .

Goebbels’s mastery of propaganda was particularly apparent after Germany’s defeats in Stalingrad and Africa, when he was to prove himself a master of the clever propaganda of holding out in the face of defeat. It would be erroneous to believe that Goebbels falsified Goebbels did not falsify the facts of the prevailing situation. On the contrary, the main thrust of his propaganda—which he carried on personally and without respite in the press and over the radio—was to continually raise hopes by citing historical parallels and making other comparisons, by conjuring up allegedly immutable laws of history, or even, as a last resort, by referring to some secret miracle weapons. Here, too, he demonstrated personal courage by appearing constantly before the public long after the His public appearances, in sharp contrast to those of many other prominent Nazis who had retreated to their bunkers and fortifications. His public appearances in these years , did much to improve an image that had until then been overwhelmingly negative. Goebbels’ Goebbels’s work was especially effective in intensifying the efforts of the home front: he became the protagonist of total war. After several false starts, the attempted assassination of Hitler on July 20, 1944 (see July Plot), brought him within view of his goal. On August 25 he became “Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War”—but it was, as he shortly lamented, too late.

On May 1April 30, 1945, Goebbels was named chancellor of the Reich in Hitler’s will. The following day, Goebbels, the only one of the original Nazi leaders to remain with Hitler in the besieged bunker in Berlin, Goebbels and poisoned his six children, and he and his wife took their own livesand those of their six children. This was the last and, if not the bloodiest, at least the most macabre production of this talented stage manager. The day before, he had been named chancellor of the Reich in Hitler’s will. For one day, on a few square metres, he thus became the last successor to Otto von Bismarck.Helmut Heiber, Joseph Goebbels (1962), in German; .